WBC, Day 2...

Woke up early Tuesday morning and had my coffee -- needed to be caffeined up for the Manoeuvre tourney that started at 9:00 AM. This was a tournament with "pods," where you played the other 3 people, and best records advanced to an 8-person quarterfinal. High roll could pick the side he wanted to play, with the caveat that you have to play every nation (assuming you go the distance) and can play no nation more than twice. In my pod, the first game saw me as the British vs. Ken (?)'s French. I won a territorial victory, garnering 25 points. 2nd game was my French vs. Ed (?)'s Prussians. I won a pretty decisive attrition victory for 27 points. The last game saw my French playing Brad's Austrians -- Brad was the guy I played on Monday night. He put up a good fight, but the French overwhelmed them eventually, giving me another 27 point victory. I easily advanced to the quarters as the 2nd seed.

Being the 2nd seed got me in a game with John Miklos, Mark Miklos' son. John is an excellent player, and I had already "shot my wad" with the French and the British. John selected the French, and I wavered between the Prussians, Spaniards, and Russians. I settled on Prussia, and we had a good game. For a while. Then John broke my right wing, and ended up routing me for a 5-1 victory. Ouch! John did go on to make the finals, though he lost his last match. I learned a few tricks, some of which I hope to employ next year!

After hanging out for a bit, I entered the first of 4 Atlantic Storm/Pacific Typhoon heats. We could choose to play either game, and I went for PT. It was a pretty good game, and I had some chance to win, but was stynied at each turn. As the game ended, the winner had 38 points, while I was 2nd at 30. The other scores were 29, 19, and 12. Damn, but I haven't won a heat here in a couple years, gotta get going!

Onto Santa Fe Rails, a monthly favorite at out Rochester meets. We played a 4-player game, and there were a couple of newbies to my left. They fed an awful lot of point opportunities to Steve Scott, the eventual winner, and he picked up 84 cash during the game -- which is huge. Hell, 50 cash is huge, I'd never seen a number as high as 84 before... So, try as I might, I could never make up that deficit (wish the newbies had been to my right...), and I finished in 2nd. Final scores were: 119-114-101-65. Seeing how the winner was spoon feed the victory, I feel like I played an excellent game, even though I didn't win. Oh well...

Now, I began thinking about my day and a half in Lancaster. I had started off with 7 straight victories, but then was saddled with 3 losses in a row. I needed to turn things around, so I went off to have a few beers, and just relax for a bit.

Later on that evening, I decided to play Ivanhoe, since a bunch of Western NY guys were playing. We were all happily buzzed, so why not? Now, this is not one of my favorite games -- it's OK, but it often takes too long for what it is. Luckily, my game finished quickly, and I won. Back on track...

Mike and Bob were in the "monster game room" playing Third World War with Jeff and Chris from Jersey, so I went and checked on their game for a while. After Mike's brake "incident," he finally made it to Lancaster and they all looked like they were having fun.

Ended the night hanging out with the boys at the bar, into the wee hours of the morning. Figured since I was skipping Wilderness War this year, I could sleep in on Wednesday, which I did.

A real fun start to the con, even if I blew it with Manoeuvre...